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>>Why they still rely on search/advertising is well known - Replacing a 150 Billion $$$ source of revenue is not a simple thing.

You just described The Innovators Dilemma. You'd hope Google, considering how everyone reveres how well run it is would find ways to avoid it, but they didn't not. You know who used to avoid the Innovators Dilemma amazingly well? Apple. You know who does it really well now? Microsoft. They literally killed their OS revenue to grow the company. That's the equivalent of Google killing their search revenue for something new. It's hard to do, but you have to do it in tech.

>>And compared to Facebook which is still 99% dependent on Ads, Google is much more diversified (total revenue is north of 250 billion). They have cloud, youtube, docs, google play, all the alphabet experiments etc.

In 2022, Google was 80%+ directly dependent on Ads for revenue, and 10.3% indirectly dependent on it. Sure, Google does a lot of things but 90.3% of the actual money that keeps the lights on is advertising. Their revenue mix is extremely similar to Meta.

They rely on advertising sure, but the part that comes from Search is ~150B $ (out of 250 B $).

People kind of dont realize a large chunk of their Ad Tech is not Search related. Its the tooling for the Publishers to sell ad real estate on their sites. Its the tooling for Advertisers to target that real estate based on data collected. Its the ad auctions. Its the ad exchanges. There is ton of shit of going on that no one on the planet is anywhere close to replicating.

> In 2022, Google was 80%+ directly dependent on Ads for revenue, and 10.3% indirectly dependent on it.

I assume the 10.3% is "Google Other". That's things like YouTube Premium, Play Store and hardware. How is any of that even indirectly dependent on ads?

I pay for youtube premium so that I dont see ads.

> YouTube Premium is dependent on ads because YouTube as a product is dependent on ads. Without ads, YouTube Premium wouldn't exist. I think the vast majority of that 10.3% is YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, Play Store and their hardware. But I still think most of those are in service to their ad engine.

That just circular reasoning. "The company wouldn't exist without ads, so I will consider all this subscription and hardware revenue to actually be ad revenue, and then complain that they're too dependent on ads".

Decrying the imminent death of Google is ridiculous, but what you’re doing is also ridiculous. Google has fragile legs. They are not diversified enough, and a blow to their cash cow could severely hurt them. Losing advertising dollars in search could even hurt the YouTube revenue stream, since it’s the same advertisers for both products.

Google could be in deep trouble in five years.

OpenAI has been gobbling up Google AI talent for years now. The difference between ChatGPT and Bard is just comical. The part that you seem to be missing is that users will gladly jump ship if something better comes along and it's kind of coming, and people are already jumping ship. Google hit the ceiling, which is awesome, but now, there is nowhere for them to go except back down. They're an AD company fighting against tech companies, they will do everything to protect their cash cow while people continue to innovate and move way past keyword search.

> they will easily replicate anything OpenAI does

... not if it threatens their cash cow they won't. It's not a technical challenge, its a business model challenge

>Google is not going anywhere and they will easily replicate anything OpenAI does.

They've had a while now, and all they've come up with is Bard.

> Google is much more diversified (total revenue is north of 250 billion)

Over 80% of that revenue is still just ads though, not really very diversified. And even with GCP they are in a distant 3rd to AWS / Azure.

> Google is much more diversified (total revenue is north of 250 billion). They have cloud, youtube, docs, google play, all the alphabet experiments etc.

Do read their 10-K: https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2022Q4_alphabet_earnings...

The only thing that realistically brings in money is ads. All other things are just subsidised by them.

For example Google Cloud (which includes both GCP and workspace offerings aka docs)? Well, it lost 6 billion dollars.

> cause they really need businesses that produce a few hundred billion to keep all their free stuff

The only such business they have is ads.